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Among iconic maternal figures, the Italian mama or nonna (grandmother) hovering over a fragrant pot of tomato sauce ranks high — and few bring the legend to life better than South Burlington’s Mary Anne Gucciardi.

Recently in the Burlington kitchen of friends, Gucciardi, 80, known as Mama Gucc (pronounced “gooch”), arrived not only with ingredients to make her famous meatballs and sauce, but also containers of meatballs and sauce, Italian wedding soup and sausage Calabrese to give away.

“You get back what you give out,” said the mother of four and grandmother of four with a smile and a shrug.

If that were literally the case, Gucciardi would be swimming in an ocean of herb-flecked tomato sauce with meatballs.

For more than two decades until just a few years ago, Gucciardi regularly cooked huge Italian feasts for a number of University of Vermont sports teams with the support of her husband and family. Her multi-course dinners — usually once a season for the ski, soccer, hockey and basketball teams — included a variety of home-cooked Italian classics like minestrone, baked stuffed mushrooms, chicken cacciatore, meatballs and sauce, and lasagna for as many as 40 team members.

“She opened up her home to us,” said longtime UVM men’s ice hockey coach, Mike Gilligan. “She just treated the kids and the coaches like they were her own family.”

“Mama Gucc was just wonderful,” agreed former men’s basketball coach, Tom Brennan. “She took care of us before we got pretty,” he joked, referring to the pre-championship-era of his team. “The food was always so lavish, from soup to nuts ...You know these kids, they eat like horses. Everybody would eat until they couldn’t stand up.”

“She was always there for us,” Brennan continued, recalling how Gucciardi accompanied the team to the 1993 funeral of their recently graduated teammate, Kevin Roberson, who had been tragically killed in a car accident. “It was so comforting to have her there and she brought a big pile of food.”

In addition, the Gucciardi family held frequent dinner parties for distinguished guests including coaches, senators, governors, professors and bishops, and also cooked countless benefit dinners, which raised more than $50,000 for a UVM scholarship fund in Roberson’s name. In September 1999, UVM honored Gucciardi and her husband by naming a new 6,000-square-foot fitness facility the Richard and Mary Anne Gucciardi Recreation and Fitness Center.

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It all began after Gucciardi met some student-athletes while helping with a Newman Catholic Center fundraiser, she explained while mixing together a double batch of meatballs. (“I never make a single batch,” she said.) During winter break, when athletes often had to stay on campus to train, she said, “they were away from home, looking for a good meal. There was a lot of joy in seeing them enjoy the food.”

Gucciardi also shared a more personal motivation to give back after her youngest son, now 50, survived a very serious car accident when he was 3 1/2. The family was in the process of moving to Burlington where her husband had landed a job with General Electric. For six weeks, Gucciardi slept by her son’s bedside in the hospital and prayed daily in the chapel at UVM. The local Italian community warmly welcomed them, she recalled, and offered support. “I just always said I would give back for what was given to us,” she said.

Family recipes

Scraping the fat and caramelized bits from a pan of roasted Italian sausage into her sauce pot, Gucciardi explained that she has taken family recipes and “made them my own over the years.”

She grew up in Haverhill, Mass., with an Italian-American father and a French-Canadian mother, but her mother learned to cook Italian from her mother-in-law, Gucciardi’s paternal grandmother, “a great cook,” Gucciardi said.

After frying the onions and garlic in the sausage fat (“You just get such flavor from that,” she explained), Gucciardi added tomato paste and canned Italian tomatoes along with a little water and generous amounts of dried parsley and basil, which would come fresh from her garden in the summer, she said.

“I never measure anything,” she added apologetically.

Luckily for her fans, Gucciardi taught a series of cooking classes in the mid-’80s for which she had to write down her recipes. It was in that class that Gucciardi met John Varricchione, in whose Burlington kitchen she was cooking last week.

Varricchione, 66, a retired teacher and football coach at Rice Memorial High School, grew up in the center of Burlington’s Italian community where, just like in Gucciardi’s family, his paternal grandmother taught his French-Canadian mother to cook family favorites.

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“But I never got my grandmother’s recipes,” he said with regret.

Last week, Varricchione and his wife, Joanne, helped Gucciardi form meatballs while her sauce simmered on the stove. The Varricchiones’ 3-year-old grandson, Carlo Pizzagalli, popped in and out of the kitchen to visit with his grandparents and “Mama Goose,” as he called her.

The cooks used a small ice cream scoop to measure out each meatball, a tool Gucciardi said she adopted years ago when student-athletes helped her to produce meatballs for fundraising dinners during which they would feed more than 800. “I had it down to a science,” she said proudly.

Gucciardi watched her helpers with a kind but careful eye. “If they have any cracks in them, I reject them,” she said, explaining that they would fall apart in the sauce.

As they worked, the scent of meatballs and simmering sauce filled the kitchen. “I can smell those meatballs cooking,” said Gucciardi happily.

“That’s always a good thing,” agreed Varricchione.

The first batch of meatballs emerged from the oven, brown and sizzling, and the second batch went in. Gucciardi stirred a generous pinch of sugar into her sauce to balance the acidity of the tomatoes.

When the meatballs had cooled a little, Carlo tasted one and gave his full approval, followed by a big hug for the cook.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lay sausages on a small roasting pan or rimmed cookie sheet and prick with a knife. Roast sausages until cooked, about 30 minutes, and remove sausages to a plate. Scrape fat and brown drippings from sausages into your sauce pot and add olive oil. Set over medium heat and add onions and garlic to pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, until golden, 5 to 6 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, 3 to 4 minutes. Fill empty tomato paste can with 6 ounces water and stir into mixture. Bring to a simmer for 2 to 3 minutes.

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Add crushed and pureed whole tomatoes, herbs, pepper and salt to taste to pot. Bring to a simmer and cook on low for 1 hour. Taste and add sugar to balance acidity as needed. Add meatballs (see recipe) and sausage to pot and simmer another hour. Serves 6-8 with pasta.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a rimmed cookie sheet or roasting pan. In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients until well blended. Use a small ice cream scoop to measure out meatballs about 1 1/2-inch in diameter and roll with hands to make completely smooth and place on cookie sheet. Bake for 25 minutes. Turn meatballs and bake another 15 minutes. Add to sauce per above recipe. Makes about 28-30 meatballs.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Liberally butter sides and bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Using a food processor, process graham crackers into fine crumbs. Stir in sugar. Coat sides and bottom of prepared pan with graham crumb mix, reserving about 3 tablespoons for topping. (Note: this is more of a light coating than a real crust.)

In a standing mixer or in a large bowl using a hand-held electric blender, beat eggs well until lemony in color. Add ricotta, cream, flour, lemon juice, lemon zest, vanilla and sugar and beat until well blended. Pour into prepared crust. Sprinkle remaining graham crumb mix evenly on top. Bake for about 60-70 minutes just until cheesecake is almost firm in center. Turn oven off and leave door ajar. Leave cheesecake in oven for another 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Run a butter knife between springform collar and cake (but leave collar on until serving). Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.